In the interest of full disclosure, I live in North Texas and have not used Amtrak for a long time.  At the same time, it does a good job in moving people back and forth in the very congested Northeast Corridor.  I have several family members who use it, and it works fine for them. Nevertheless, I've been calling for privatization for a long time.  It makes no sense for the U.S. to have a rail service subsidized by taxpayers.  No sense at all! I agree with Jeffrey Dorfman: Amtrak carries about 30 million passengers per year. Amtrak does not provide statistics on how many different individuals this represents. However, given that over 11 million passengers rode on the northeast corridor trains which are most suited to commuting and that some people commute daily or weekly on Amtrak trains, it seems likely that the actual number of distinct people riding Amtrak annually is a much smaller number, more on the order of 5 million people. This leads...(Read Full Post)